As a mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani employed social-media influencers with great skill and success, and he brought the strategy to City Hall. His administration regularly works with influencers — some of them paid with public funds — to disseminate information about sanitation, public health, or how to navigate New York’s labyrinthine municipal agencies.

Asking people with large digital audiences to post timely reminders on their Instagram or YouTube accounts about when to get a flu shot or how to safely dispose of hazardous waste can be an efficient way to connect with hard-to-reach corners of the city: According to Pew Research, over half of all Americans say they regularly get news from social media, including 38 percent of adults ages 18 to 29. But it’s critical that city-government collaborations with influencers are nonpolitical and fully disclosed to the public in compliance with state law.

“Influencers have multiple hats, and so they may be sometimes acting a bit like a journalist but they may also be making money off another campaign,” says Anya Schiffrin, a researcher at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs who recently started a firestorm by publishing a paper examining City Hall’s use of influencers. “What I’d like to see is more clarity and disclosure and transparency so we know exactly what these people are doing and when they’re in journalism and when they’re not.”

Team Mamdani has done itself no favors by blurring the boundaries and then refusing to disclose the names of the estimated 250 influencers it regularly collaborates with. Some of the........

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